Major Movement

Lincoln Center music series links up with top choreographer.

It’s almost exhausting to have a conversation with Rob Kapilow, the brains behind NPR’s “What Makes It Great?,” but you’ll undoubtedly come away having learned something. These days, the composer-conductor’s infectious enthusiasm for serious music has spilled over into the world of modern dance—he’s enlisted Seán Curran to choreograph the FamilyMusik series he curates at Lincoln Center. Kapilow admits that this Saturday’s program, “Everybody Dance Now,” came out of nowhere: It “really didn’t start with a concept at all. Sometimes things start with the littlest something, and you don’t know where they will lead.” The ultimate result begins with a combination of square-dancing and Irish folk-dancing—a rarely used part of Curran’s childhood dance training—set to Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown.” (Beware, says Curran: Parents and kids from the audience will be brought onstage to improvise with the company.) A Brahms waltz becomes a piece about opposition, and Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Ring a Ding Ding” is paired with what Curran describes as an “eccentric twist”
on swing dance. The two artists collaborated on this program a few years back after Kapilow saw Curran in Stomp and asked him to add movement to his existing repertoire of children’s concerts; Curran, in turn, was intrigued by Kapilow’s “wonderfully agile mind” and work that allows “a 5-year-old
to have a more profound experience, to go deeper and see and hear more.” Sounds like a marriage made for the stage.